Delphi is a programming language and environment that is establishing its viability in the marketplace, particularly for developing systems with sophisticated graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in a Windows environment. Wiener and Wiatrowski are clearly competent in the use of Delphi to construct object-oriented applications. This book is a good tool for experienced programmers who want to learn Delphi. It is replete with examples that demonstrate the use of Delphi to create interesting GUIs in a Windows environment.

The title is not completely accurate. This book is about the visual aspects of Delphi. Its coverage of object-oriented programming is less than complete. It will serve well in teaching the use of Delphi, but will not provide a deep understanding of object-oriented programming. This book uses learning-through-examples as its primary pedagogical technique. For those who learn best through this method, the book will work well. It will not serve well as a reference book. The index is limited. There is no appendix listing Delphi methods, commands, properties, and so on.

This book is divided into four parts: basic principles, the Delphi visual object-oriented system, specialized aspects of Windows programming, and case studies. Section 1 is the most abstract, describing various basic principles, including object-oriented programming, event-driven programming, Windows programming, and visual programming. The coverage of object-oriented programming seems to assume some knowledge of related terminology and concepts. Many definitions are weak, unclear, or nonstandard. The authors use an older Booch notation for class diagrams, rather than Universal Markup Language. Readers would be better served by skipping this chapter and learning object-oriented programming from other sources. The idea of devoting a chapter to event-driven and Windows programming is excellent, but this particular approach to these topics is weak. The authors try to establish historical context by discussing the evolution of user interfaces in operating systems. The result is confusion about the important concepts of event-driven programming. The chapter on visual programming begins the pragmatic discussion of Delphi, which is the primary strength of this book. It is not a chapter on visual programming so much as a description of how to use the drag-and-drop interface of Delphi to construct GUIs.

The second section contains the technical core of the book: a detailed presentation of the Delphi components used to create graphical user interfaces. Chapter 5 introduces various Delphi components and properties and their use; chapter 6 approaches related topics in more detail. Chapter 7 illustrates the construction of custom components. These chapters are filled with Delphi examples illustrating these ideas and techniques. The final two chapters in this section contain the analysis, design, and implementation of a single example.

The third section is an interesting and useful presentation of some more specialized aspects of Windows programming. Chapter 10 is a well-written discussion of dynamic link libraries, including instructions on how to construct them. Chapter 11 explains how to create animation. Chapter 12 describes the Delphi components used to build multimedia applications.

The final section consists of four chapters about a Delphi program that plays the game Solitaire. This detailed example is presented in the model-view-controller paradigm.

The book’s audience is experienced programmers who want to learn this useful tool. However, it is not a textbook. Each chapter includes a summary, but there are no exercises or problems and few references to related work. The index is adequate for finding the major concepts, but it does not list most of the Delphi components discussed in the book. This book will work well for programmers who have a reasonable understanding of object-oriented programming and event-driven programming, and who are concrete thinkers who learn best through examples. It will be less useful for abstract thinkers who prefer a systematic and concise presentation of the syntactic and semantic components of a new language.